WHEN I was young, I thought war was boring. It was a matter for old men and was always served up in black and white, so I was shocked when my dad informed me that a war – the Falklands – had taken place during my lifetime.

This discomfited me. It brought war out of history books and documentaries and made it seem far too close: war still happened. It wasn’t sealed in history but could break out at any time. So instead of thinking war was boring, I began fretting that it would happen again and that they’d take my dad to fight. Then the first Gulf War broke out, and then the second, and now Trump is in place, Russia is clawing and biting its way back to attention, and China is grumbling. There is talk of nuclear proliferation.

Suddenly the threat of war is back. How could I ever have thought it was stuck in history?

War is never over.

When I was 17, I was stamping my feet in frustration. I’d started reading everything I could find in Rutherglen Library about war – this was during the days before the internet! – and discovered an old novel with crispy yellow-edged pages about the Warsaw Ghetto.

It was Mila 18 by Leon Uris.

I was gripped by it and could hardly believe the cruelty of encroaching adult life which meant I had to put it down and go to work.

I stood behind the till in Marks & Spencer’s menswear department and stamped my foot.

I was so desperate for my tea break so I could scurry to the canteen and grab another 15 minutes with the book.

How could I ever have thought war was boring?

War is back and is the ultimate topic: never boring, always horrifying, constantly dreadful. That’s why I was really looking forward to SS-GB (BBC1, Sunday), a new series based on the Len Deighton novel which imagines an alternative history where the Nazis won the Battle of Britain and invaded the country.

There are some hysterical online fools who liken Trump to Hitler, which is an appalling insult to all who suffered and died under the Nazi regime. (Call him “Hitler” when he starts invading countries and planning genocide on an industrial scale.

Until then, pipe down and try reading some history books).

Perhaps this series would offer a disturbing and well-timed reminder of what life under fascism was like, and would jolt others out of their complacency by showing famous London landmarks draped in swastikas. Really, how could this series fail?

OK, we’ve only had one episode so far so let’s not talk of it having “failed” but, my God, it was dull! Rather than asking how it could fail, let’s ask how the writers could take the frightening scenario – one which was entirely feasible in 1940 – of a Nazi invasion and make it tedious?

There will be readers of this paper who are not especially fond of Churchill, but I’m not one of them.

I’m glad that big bruiser was in charge during the war.

Can you imagine the crazy, mangled route history could have taken if any of our current leaders had been in charge?

Can you see Jeremy Corbyn saying we’d fight them on the beaches? No, he’d probably have insisted we ground the Spitfires and try to become pals with the Germans.

Would Teresa May have held Hitler’s hand as he walked down the steps of the Reichstag? As for Boris, who thinks he’s some kind of jovial cartoon descendent of Churchill? I shudder.

Thankfully, Churchill was in charge, the right man at the right time, and while it’s all been decline and ruin for Britain since 1945, the war was indeed its “finest hour”. This is what alternative histories are supposed to do: make you look at the sequence of events and terrify yourself with the thousand ways it could all have gone wrong.

What if Britain hadn’t had Churchill? If it hadn’t had the Spitfires and Hurricanes?

If it hadn’t had the clattering shipyards and hard-working housewives?

If it hadn’t had the little old English Channel?

You could entertain yourself for months with these alternative history scenarios, but SS-GB couldn’t even do it for 60 minutes.

Getting off to a great start,it showed us a ruined and bullet-spattered Buckingham Palace, looking rather like the Reichstag in 1945, and there were scarlet swastikas hanging from it. The Mall was being prepared for a victory parade where the last surviving Spitfire was to be presented to roly-poly Hermann Goering. What a stinging humiliation!

That symbol of defiance and skill was to be presented, creaking and limping and defeated, to the Nazi occupiers. Oh, that’s gotta hurt!

But we didn’t see the vile presentation because a Resistance fighter popped up and shot some Luftwaffe guys and that rather interrupted the proceedings.

And that’s where the show veered off course: rather than showing Britain’s humiliation and how the country tried to cope, or collaborate, the story just wandered away and became a typical crime drama.

What a waste! There are crime dramas on TV every five minutes. We don’t need another.

But I tried to be a sport and play along: maybe it’ll be a good crime drama? Hardly. The detective was about 12. It was impossible to believe he was a tough Scotland Yard type. Instead, with his trilby and coat, he looked like a boy in his grandad’s old clothes, and it seemed he tried to compensate for his youthful looks by putting on a low, gravelly voice, doing an impression of John Hurt. Again, he just seemed like a boy imitating grandad’s 50-a-day growl.

And who was the Scotland Yard Kid up against? Comedy Nazis straight from ’Allo ’Allo. Based on the first episode, this series is a wasted opportunity, and a dull one at that.